'My G.o.d!' exclaimed Yudin.

'I've seen her, Vasya.' There were tears in Dmitry's eyes now. 'She's back at Degtyarny Lane, as if nothing had happened.'

'At Degtyarny Lane?' Yudin raised his voice. 'What about Tamara Valentinovna? We must do something.'

'I know. I know. But ... I can't. How can I chase across the country to save her one day, and then destroy her the next?'

'You must, Mitka. Think of what she's become.'

'I can't,' he moaned.

'Then I will.' The determination in his voice was unshakeable.

Dmitry looked up at him, his eyes glistening. 'I can't ask you to do that, Vasya.'

'I hope you don't plan on asking me not to.'

Dmitry shook his head. Yudin was right. It was not for him to force his cowardice on to others. 'No. No,' he said. 'You must do what you know is right.'

Yudin nodded, but did not seem to relish the prospect. Then he posed a question which Dmitry had already asked himself. 'Why do you think he let you live?'

'Tyeplov, you mean?'

Yudin nodded. 'It seemed like he had the perfect opportunity to have his revenge on you,' he said.

The answer was all too easy. 'You think he hasn't?' Dmitry wailed. 'You think that for me to die there quickly wouldn't have been a blessing compared with the state I'm in now? To go on living, knowing that the woman I love has been transformed into a creature like him?'

'Love?' asked Yudin simply.

'Loved. She's beyond any human affection now.' It was the most categorical lie he had ever spoken.

'Of course she is,' said Yudin. 'We found where Tyeplov was living, by the way.' He seemed happier now to change the subject, if only slightly. 'Gribov remembered the address where the letters from Raisa had been sent. It's not far from the theatre. There was a cellar, and a coffin. I burned it he won't be able to return there. But ... I found the letters.' He reached into his drawer and placed a bundle of papers on the desk. 'I suspect he destroyed the earlier ones.'

Dmitry ignored them. 'Have you read them?'

'I couldn't bear to.' Yudin paused, then spoke with an air of confidentiality. 'I take it you were unaware of her condition.'

'Condition?' The word drove through Dmitry's mind like a hot poker. 'She wasn't ...' He couldn't bear even to imagine it. 'My child?'

Yudin looked horrified to have put the thought into his mind. 'No, no,' he said quickly. 'Not that. Almost the reverse. I've known for some months, I'm afraid she was consumptive.'

'What?' It seemed so irrelevant now, after what had taken place, but somehow the idea began to penetrate Dmitry's mind to infiltrate it.

'I don't know why she chose me to confide in perhaps because it's I who knows you best. She didn't even tell Tamara.'

'She was dying?' gasped Dmitry.

'A few months at most, so they told her.'

For the first time in days, Dmitry heard music once again playing in his mind. It was the sound of hope. Dmitry felt as though he had been falling from a cliff and with flailing hands had grasped some thread of cotton dangling from above, something so fragile, so insubstantial, that only a fool would place hope in it, and yet which might save him. There was a chance that Raisa's actions in some bizarre way made sense.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the letters and began to read them. They were not the billets-doux he had been expecting far from it. They were precise and rational almost clinical. Of course, it was only half of a correspondence; Dmitry could not see what Tyeplov had written back, but each subsequent letter from Raisa implied that she had received the responses she had been hoping for. There were fragments that spoke to him as if she had been in the room, standing beside him.

And what of any disease that a man or woman might have been suffering before the transformation? Would such an ailment go on to afflict them once they had become like you?

In the next letter, she pressed the point.

And so even if the person were to be on the very verge of death, they would, on reawakening, emerge into a life of immortality? You can a.s.sure me of that?

It all made perfect sense. He could not condone her for seeking to escape death by abandoning everything that was good, but it was at least understandable. It was not whim, caprice or mere vanity. But there was more.

You tell me of the changes that would take place; the new strengths and the new weaknesses. But what of those things that remain the same? Could I still laugh? Could I still enjoy the sensation of a man's arms around me? Could I still love?

And then: You lead me to doubt you. I ask if I could laugh or love, or even cry, and you tell me that not only could I, but that those emotions would be a thousand times stronger than what I experience now. Why should I trust what you say? Why should you choose to help me? And yet, how will it benefit me to doubt you? You offer me my only hope.

Then there was the first mention, obliquely, of Dmitry himself.

Your candour can only do you credit. You are right; it is vain of me to think that you would do this for my benefit. I do not know what went on between you and Aleksei Ivanovich, but you clearly owe him a great debt and, I suspect, a little love. I can only thank G.o.d that you allow some of that obligation to be transferred to his son, and, through him, to me. I pray that he will choose to benefit from it as I do.

Dmitry glanced up at Yudin. His face carried that familiar, fatherly look of benevolence. He didn't probe or question or attempt to force Dmitry into revealing what the letters contained, he simply waited, knowing that he would be told everything that he deserved to know.

Dmitry read on.

You tell me of the acts which you and I must perform together for my salvation to take place. I will not hide from you the fact that they terrify and revolt me, but I am not so timid as to shy away from them merely because of that. But the question on which everything must hinge is: will I, once transformed, be possessed of that same ability to make others (one other in particular) into a being such as myself?

It could only be that she received an answer in the affirmative. Her next letter expanded on it.

You make it sound so beautiful. The Bible talks of a man and a woman becoming 'one flesh' but what you speak of might better be described as 'one soul'. And yet if that can be the state that exists between Dmitry and me, will not the same apply between me and you? If that one hurdle can be overcome, then I can foresee only bliss for us.

Then came the final letter. It was dated 14 August just two days before the letter from Tyeplov arranging to meet her. That one had to be a response to this.

You have convinced me. There is so much that I must take on trust, but so much that I have to gain by trusting. It is only the faithless who have no hope of heaven. I am willing, more than willing, just as you tell me I must be. I can only hope that, when the time comes, Dmitry will feel the same. But I will not tell him beforehand. My act of faith must be my own. If he chooses not to join me, I will not blame him, he will be acting out of goodness.

Write to me and tell me when you will come. I am ready. I will be waiting. Come soon.

Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva Dmitry lowered the final letter. He had not put any of them back on the desk, but let them rest in his lap. His face glowed with a mixture of pa.s.sion and shame. He felt tears p.r.i.c.king at his eyes. He remembered what Tyeplov had said to him in Klin. 'She's ready for you, Mitka,' and 'She's beyond death now.' It all made sense.

'No man likes to read of his own betrayal at the hands of the woman he loves,' said Yudin.

Dmitry shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'No. It's not that at all.' He tried to think what he should do, but in his mind there was only Raisa. He felt her pain, her indecision and her hope pouring out to him in every line he read. She had suffered so terribly, made so awful and profound a choice, and yet that did not mean that she had chosen correctly. He looked around the room. It was dark and dank and stuffy no place to be thinking of her, of how he might regain her.

Yudin reached out his hand across the desk. 'Might I see?' he asked.

'No,' said Dmitry, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the letters and putting them in his pocket. He knew that it was perhaps the most stupid thing he had ever done, that if anyone had the wisdom to tell him how to act then it was Yudin, but for that very reason he feared Yudin's opinion of what he should do might not tally with his own even though, as yet, he had no opinion.

He stood up. 'I'm sorry, Vasya, but I have to sort this one out for myself.'

'You always have done, Mitka. And you've always come to the right decision.'

'And forget what I said earlier. I do ask you to do nothing with regard to Raisa. I'll deal with the problem, one way or another. Whatever happens, she'll be out of your way.'

He turned and headed for the stairs that would lead him up to the fresh air.

'Mitka!' Yudin called from behind him. Dmitry turned. 'Always act in accordance with your conscience. No man can ask you to do any more.'

Dmitry stared at him. It was as if he understood. Perhaps he had read the letters already that would be like him. He would lie if it were necessary, but only to do good. Dmitry paced across the room and leaned across the desk to kiss Yudin on each cheek. Then he turned and left, knowing that he might never see his old friend again.

This was the fastest Tamara had ever travelled. The freight trains went at about sixteen versts every hour; the pa.s.senger trains at forty. The imperial train was unlimited by anything but the power of the locomotive pulling it, and the impetuosity of His Majesty. A conductor had told her that they would reach speeds in excess of fifty-five, but moments later a colleague had added that that was only because Aleksandr was more in favour of a smooth ride than a speedy one. Under Nikolai, he told her, they had sometimes got up to seventy. But even at today's speed, the journey from Petersburg to Moscow would be completed in under fifteen hours. It was a quirk of tradition that even when Pyotr the Great moved his capital from Moscow to Petersburg, it had been decided that coronations would still take place within the Kremlin. Now that the railway had come, the decision seemed modern and far-sighted.

She had only had a few hours' stop in Petersburg. The scheduled train had got her in at the usual time of nine in the morning, and the imperial train had departed that same afternoon. There were more dignitaries on board than had ever been gathered together on a Russian train, more even than when the line was opened. The imperial ultramarine coaches there were only two in existence had been hooked together, but that was only sufficient for His Majesty, the tsaritsa, the tsarevich and the other children, the dowager empress and perhaps a few others. Tamara did not even know if Konstantin was included in that august group. The rest of the train, apart from the two kitchen cars, was made up of compartmentalized first-cla.s.s carriages, specially cleaned and repainted for the occasion, though some of them seemed to be running without occupants.

At the very end of the train there was one coach open rather than divided into compartments, but still first cla.s.s where the likes of Tamara had their seats. There were agents of the Third Section and the Gendarmerie, officers of the regular police and middle-ranking employees of the railway. None of them was worthy of sitting among the n.o.bility in the other coaches, but the imperial train would not pull any carriage that was not at the very least first cla.s.s.

For now, Tamara chose not to sit. She stood outside, on the iron platform at the back of the train, watching the track vanish into the distance. She exhaled and watched as the smoke that she had drawn in from her cigarette was caught in the wind and dragged away from her. It was dark, almost midnight, but the train would carry on through the night and arrive in Moscow in the morning, leaving the imperial family a few days to prepare themselves for the great, once-in-a-generation spectacle that was the coronation of the Tsar of All the Russias.

The locomotive whistle blew and the conductor, who had been standing a little way away, moved to apply the brake. Even an imperial train needed to stop for fuel. The station they rolled into was Okulovka. Tamara threw her cigarette down on to the track and stepped on to the station platform before they had quite stopped. There were only railway staff on it no pa.s.sengers. It wasn't a scheduled train, and even if members of the public turned up, they wouldn't be allowed on to the station. They were free to stand beside the track and cheer, which during the day they had, but not to get too close when the train stopped.

Tamara was not the only person to alight quickly. From every carriage at least one figure got off and looked warily up and down the platform just as she had. She was not even the only woman. Moments later, as if responding to the command of some unseen ch.o.r.eographer, a number of the pa.s.sengers disembarked as a single ma.s.s. Tamara focused on the imperial carriages, but there was no sign of His Majesty or any of his immediate family. Okulovka was only a second-category station, and so they would not be staying long. She looked too for Konstantin, but did not see him. That did not mean he was not there. While the tsar, a typical Romanov, would have stood above the crowd, his brother could more easily get lost among it.

Everything seemed quite relaxed. She had spoken to a few of the Third Section's men who were based in Petersburg, and their opinion was that this was more for show than out of fear of any serious threat. The importance of a leader was reflected in how well he was guarded, and so a leader of Russia required the most guards of all. In her bag she carried the Colt pistol that Yudin had given her for quite a different purpose but she doubted she would have call to use it.

She walked up the platform, glancing at the faces she pa.s.sed, and occasionally into the train. In the rear of the two imperial coaches she thought she caught sight of His Majesty, though she really only recognized his distinctive moustache. He looked pensive; for a man only three years older than herself, it was a great weight that had been thrust on his shoulders but one he had been born to.

Then, on the platform, at the end of the very same carriage, she saw Konstantin. He was looking back up at the train, speaking to a woman Tamara could only guess was his wife, Aleksandra Iosifovna, who was looking down the platform, straight towards Tamara. Tamara was struck by how beautiful the grand d.u.c.h.ess was. She had a reputation for it, but Konstantin had never described her. But then he wouldn't, not to his mistress. Tamara could almost see something of herself in the woman. Their faces were quite different, but her hair had a hint of red to it, though darker than Tamara's. Their builds were similar too neither of them skinny, nor by any means fat; both with a full bosom and a body and limbs that curved gracefully. She was nine years Tamara's junior.

Aleksandra turned to face her husband and, seeing her in profile for the first time, Tamara could only be surprised at the size of her nose. It wasn't bulbous or even unattractive, just rather long. It was the only advantage that Tamara could see she had, at least in terms of appearance, but it was enough to cause her to smirk a little. At the same moment Konstantin turned and his eyes fell on Tamara. It was bad enough that he should see her at all, but that when he looked at her it was to see her sn.i.g.g.e.ring at his wife's nose was appalling. Tamara felt her face redden and hoped he had not guessed her thoughts.

Konstantin was a model of calm. He had seen Tamara, she was certain, but he did not bat an eyelid or waver for a moment in his conversation with Aleksandra. Tamara walked past, perhaps a little closer to him than she should have, but neither he nor his wife seemed to notice. She walked all the way down to the north-western end of the platform, where the imperial waiting rooms were situated, but none of the royal family had chosen to make use of them at this stop. She looked inside the Kartsov Restaurant, which was reasonably full the kitchen cars on the train served only the imperial coaches, and so by now many chinovniki and other attendants were feeling hungry and thirsty. She paid her ten copecks for a cup of coffee.

After about a quarter of an hour, the restaurant began to clear as pa.s.sengers reboarded and the train prepared to leave. Tamara remained until almost everyone had gone, then walked down the platform towards her coach at the back. She pa.s.sed the imperial carriages, and then the compartmentalized first-cla.s.s carriages where, on a scheduled service, families and individuals could enjoy privacy for an extra charge. She had just pa.s.sed an open window when she heard a familiar voice.

'Excuse me, mademoiselle.'

She took a step back and looked in through the train window.

'Yes?' she said.

'Would you, by any chance, be interested in becoming a member of a very exclusive group of people?'

She raised an eyebrow and smiled, but said nothing. The door opened and she stepped inside.

The locomotive blew its whistle and the train rolled slowly out of the station and onward towards Moscow.

It was an honour, but t.i.tular Councillor Myshkin could see it only as a curse. He was certain that of all the people on the imperial train, he was of the lowliest rank and that probably included the driver and the stoker. He had only been invited on board because His High Excellency, Actual Privy Councillor Laptyev, still had preparations to make for the coronation and needed a secretary to write down his thoughts.

It was Laptyev who had called it an honour, but now he had fallen asleep further up the train with a bottle of vodka in his hand and left Myshkin to write up letters to three dozen dignitaries explaining precisely what the limits of their duties would be on the day. And a moving train was not an easy place to write a letter, particularly when accompanied by the loud snoring of an Actual Privy Councillor, and the raucous shouts of others who had not yet succ.u.mbed to the drowsy numbness to which so much celebration must eventually lead.

Fortunately, Myshkin had noticed a few empty compartments and so, while the train was halted, he walked down the platform and got into one, and now he sat there alone, trying to write. The problem was the shaking of the train. If Myshkin had not been so busy with his work, he would have been interested to make notes on how the amount of vibration did not simply increase with the speed of the train. When they had been going slowly, it had been quite violent, and then they had reached a velocity at which the train itself had seemed suddenly comfortable, calm even. If only the driver could have kept them at that rate of progress. Now they had speeded up further, and the movement was worse than ever.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the whole carriage shook. For a moment Myshkin feared that a bomb had been laid on the track, but he soon realized that the train was continuing its swift, rocky motion. It had just been some kink or perturbation in the rails. The only thing that had been disturbed was the door that led through to the next compartment in the carriage. The noise he had heard had been its banging against the wooden part.i.tion.

He looked through, and his pen fell from his hand and on to the floor.

The scene was framed perfectly by the doorway. Its main element was a woman's naked back. Not quite naked; her underskirts were still on, but were dragged up and bunched around her waist, held there by the hands of a man whose face was obscured by the woman's body. Her own hands were raised and clasped behind her head, holding up a ma.s.s of curled red hair that would otherwise have hidden the beautiful Myshkin could not deny it curve of her back.

Her knees were up on the train seat, on either side of the man who sat there. His trousers were down around his ankles. While the rocking of the train might have been a hindrance to Myshkin's chosen occupation for the evening, it seemed to provide a convenient metronome for these two. Each time the wheels beneath the carriage crossed the join between two lengths of rail, which would have knocked Myshkin's pen across the page, the woman's body crashed down on to the man's, and even on flat sections of track they performed the same movement, maybe with a little less vigour.

Myshkin recovered his pen from the floor and put it on the table beside him. He was no stranger to the s.e.xual act, as his wife would attest and his nine children demonstrated, but in the thirty-seven years of his life it had never occurred to him that anyone could or should want to perform it in so uncomfortable and precarious a position. A bed would prove far more suited to the activity, though it had to be admitted that there was no bed available in the carriage.

It suddenly seemed to Myshkin that the train was beginning to travel faster, though a glance out of the window showed the landscape outside rushing past at the same speed as before. He quickly realized that it was not the train that had increased its tempo, but the couple in the compartment opposite. Like an unruly violin section, they had broken free of the rhythm dictated by their conductor, and were racing ahead to the conclusion of their performance. The train could no longer keep up with them, and Myshkin might have been convinced that it was their intention to arrive in Moscow ahead of it.

Then the woman stopped moving. She tried to rise, but the man's hands, still at her waist, held her down on him. She leaned forward and slightly to one side, putting her arms around his neck, and in so doing allowed her red tresses to fall down and cascade across her back. The man's face peeked from behind her shoulder.

It was the Grand Duke Konstantin. Though his eyes were shut tight, his spectacles were still perched unmistakably on his nose. t.i.tular Councillor Myshkin could not see the woman's face, but he felt certain that she was not the grand d.u.c.h.ess. She certainly didn't behave as though she was.

Myshkin stood up and walked across the compartment to the door. He closed it quietly but firmly, and returned to writing his letters.

CHAPTER XXII.

THERE WAS NO chance that tamara would have been granted a place within the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption, nor would she have wanted it. It was a beautiful, warm day in late August, perhaps one of the last good days they would get before the autumn. Inside the cathedral it would be close and stuffy, and all there was to see would be stilted and formal. From here she could see Russia not the entire land but, it seemed to her, the entire people, or a fair sample of them. Without even turning her head she could look out on what felt like half the population of Moscow.

She had found herself a spot among the crowds in Ivanovskaya Square, in the south-eastern corner of the Kremlin. It was evidently an ideal viewpoint; cl.u.s.tered in the same area were a number of artists, making sketches of what they saw before them, so that posterity might never forget the day. Behind her was the Church of Saints Konstantin and Yelena, nestling in the Taynitzkiy Garden, and beyond that the river Moskva, flowing below the Kremlin walls, spanned by the Stone Bridge to one side and the Moskva Bridge to the other. Stretching across the skyline, their domes glistering in the sunlight, were more churches than she could count, some tiny, others vast cathedrals. To her left, beyond the Kremlin walls, she could see the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, built to celebrate the deliverance of Moscow from Bonaparte, and still not complete. Diametrically opposite, in Red Square, stood the garish painted domes of Saint Vasiliy's; far older, and for her the true symbol of Moscow.

She had begun the day in the company of Rodion and Vadim, but they had soon separated, her brother sensing her desire to be alone. She was almost at the back of the crowd, but the added height of the slope meant she had a better view. Ahead of her perhaps ten thousand people lined just this side of the path that His Majesty's carriage had taken that morning, having entered from Red Square through the Saviour's Gate. The crowd was held back and the pathway kept clear by three ranks of guards in their finest uniforms. On the other side, a similar cordon pinned back another huge crowd into the area in front of the a.s.sumption Belfry. From where she stood, she could clearly see the Tsar Bell in its place in front of the bell tower, a huge gap in its side, big enough to walk through, where it had shattered in a fire.

The imperial procession must have been over a verst long. The carriages and mounted guards had come down from the Saviour's Gate, past the bell tower and the Cathedral of the Archangel and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, and deposited their charges outside the newly completed Great Kremlin Palace. After that, as the various members of the imperial family and other dignitaries had paused and waved to the crowds before going in, the carriages and hors.e.m.e.n had continued down to exit the Kremlin by the Borovitskaya Tower, in order to allow room for the remainder of the procession to pa.s.s through.

When Konstantin had climbed down from his coach he had looked distant and minuscule, but Tamara had still been able to recognize him. With him were his wife and his little son, and two daughters, the youngest only two years old. It was strange for her to watch him like that much like the occasions in Petersburg when she had silently, distantly gazed upon her son Luka. Today she was just like any other Russian who had come to see the imperial family on this grand occasion, but she wondered how many of the women in the crowd around her could boast that they had slept with one of the men in the royal party. She smirked to herself. At least one or two others, she'd be prepared to guess. The Romanovs were not the most chaste of men. But she hoped it would be only she who could claim to be part of that elite group who had done it at a speed of fifty-five versts per hour.

She had been quite unprepared for the encounter, understanding that even to speak to Konstantin in such a public place as on the train risked their being discovered. But once they were alone in the carriage, he told her how he had yearned for her all the time they had been apart, and how the momentary glimpse of her walking along the platform had inflamed his pa.s.sion. It was evidently true. Their brief liaison in the small compartment had been the most fervent she had ever known with him. She had left him at the next station, even before the train had come to a halt, so that no one would connect her to the fact that, a few minutes later, the grand duke had emerged from exactly the same door.

In the few days since then, since she had returned to Moscow, life had gone on very much as usual. Raisa had refused to tell her any more detail of what had happened in Klin between her and Dmitry and Tyeplov, but seemed to be back to her usual self. Tamara had not seen anything of Dmitry, despite calling twice at his rooms, but Yudin had a.s.sured her that all was well with him. The strangest thing was that Dmitry had not once called on Raisa. But that was their problem, not Tamara's.

Things had quietened down a little now that the entire procession had pa.s.sed and all who were needed for the coronation had gone into the Great Palace. Tamara had looked, but not caught sight of Dmitry at the head of the Izmailovsky Regiment as it paraded past. She knew how easily she might have missed him. The crowd happily remained, knowing that the imperial family would soon re-emerge. The mood was one of light-hearted chatter. Cheering could often be heard above the sound of the bells that pealed from every church in the city. She scarcely remembered the coronation of Nikolai I. She had been only five, but had a vague image of watching from somewhere in the city, hand in hand with Yelena and Valentin not with her true parents, they had gone by then, though it couldn't have been too long before. The Lavrovs described it as quite a solemn occasion the most obvious noise from the crowd being the sound of their prayers for Nikolai's long life and safety. It was a sign of how times were changing.

Another cheer rose up, louder than the general hubbub. Tamara looked in the same direction as everybody else, and could just see a vague movement of figures, all but obscured by the mult.i.tude between her and them. But she knew what was happening. The tsar and his entourage were leaving the Palace of the Facets and stepping out on to the Red Porch, before descending into Cathedral Square and thence into the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption.

Tamara held her breath. It was a sublime moment. A new tsar was about to be crowned.